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G.I. Joe is about to celebrate his 40th birthday. That is, G.I. Joe the 12 inch action figure. In 1964 the Hasbro Corporation introduced Joe to the American public as the first poseable soldier in toy manufacturing history. 1964 was also the year
that US President Lyndon Johnson requested that Congress allow American troops to "freely intervene" in the Vietnam conflict. This request was the result
of an attack on two US naval ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. It was also the year that Susan Sontag's essay "Notes On Camp" was published in the Partisan Review.
In 1964 Hasbro was careful not to call G.I Joe a doll. In fact, during the
first year that Joe was on toy shelves, a corporate memo circulated to Hasbro employees clearly stating that sales people
who referred to Joe as a doll would not have their orders filled. Perhaps, if sales representatives had taken Sontag's cue
from her essay on Camp and considered the power of quotation marks, they might have weathered the wrath of Hasbro's corporate
memos more gracefully. G.I. Joe was, indeed, not a doll. G.I. Joe was a "doll."
Apparently, Joe was not to be confused
with other products on the market. Products such as Barbie's sidekick, Ken. Ken was introduced by the Mattel Corporation 3 years earlier in 1961. And, although both "dolls" were virtually identical (amongst other things, Ken and Joe were both
eunuchs), there seemed to be a divide between each "doll's" performance of masculinity. Joe seemed to gravitate toward "butch," and
Ken? well, didn't. However, these distinctions are irrelevant if we take heart in RuPaul's recent insight that "you're born naked and everything else you put on is drag." Go, Ken. And, according to Ken "experts,"
a white, human male has a 1 in 50 chance of actually achieving a Ken physique. I suppose the implication here is that a Joe
body is not an impossibility. Go, Joe.
During the first year that G.I. Joe made himself available to young boys, this
intensely macho-eunich (and all his ultra-macho accessories) sold approximately $36.5 million dollars worth of product. $36.5
million dollars represents a whole lot of Joes. And, based on the number of Joes sold in that first year, it might be fun
to do a "Twinkie statistic" and determine how many times all those Joes, daisy chained head to toe, might circumnavigate the
globe. Go, Joe. I think in the case of Twinkies, the total number of snack cakes sold since their invention in 1930 might wrap around the globe something like 200 times.
In 1999 alone, more than 500 million Twinkies were sold in the United States. Twinkies come packaged in pairs. Each Twinkie
contains 185 calories. As of this writing I have not discovered any statistics on the number of calories a G.I. Joe contains.
Twinkies were invented by James Dewan, an employee of the Chicago based Continental Baking Company, in 1933. The
name came from the expression "twinkle toes," which, at one time was a brand of shoes. During World War II, Twinkies were
redesigned with a banana flavored filling. The banana filling allowed Continental Baking to market their product as a nutritional substitute for
real bananas which were in short supply during the war (Yes, we have no bananas?). Apparently, in 1999, a package of Twinkies
was one of the items chosen by the White House to be included in their See, Twinkies, apparently have an unnaturally long shelf life. Oh, and maybe it was all those preservatives that kept James
Dewan (the Twinkie inventor) alive till his 80th birthday in 1981 (he claimed to eat two Twinkies every day of his life).
So
much for banana jokes. Back to G.I. Joe. The original G.I. Joe line up included a soldier, a sailor, a marine, a pilot and,
for a very brief time, a nurse. I know, this line up begs the question, "what about an Indian, or, perhaps a biker in chaps?"
Presently a G.I. Joe Nurse in good condition is worth a very collectable $6,000. Unfortunately, in July, 2003, G.I. Joe
Nurse was outranked by the original G.I. Joe prototype which was auctioned for $600,000.
This original "boy toy" (no
pun intended) became a staple in toy closets (no pun intended) and was solely responsible for "outing" the fantasies of thousands
and thousands of young boys in need of, well, something. In the early days, Joe's hard, plastic body measured a proud 12
inches (no pun intended). And, although he was marketed as an "all American hero," Joe was manufactured in Hong Kong, Japan,
and, at times, sweat shops in Taiwan.
In 1976, on the eve of the United States' bicentennial celebration, Hasbro halted
the production of G.I. Joe. Apparently the petroleum-based plastic that he was extruded from was too expensive to produce
during the OPEC oil embargo.
Sadly, when Joe was reintroduced in 1982, he had been emasculated to a flaccid 3 3/4 inch length. Perhaps
there was something meaningful about this new, more modestly sized, Joe. That is, something more meaningful than a dick joke.
Perhaps his smaller size reflected something about the condition of his own ego, and/or the condition of the American psyche
in a post-Vietnam era. Incidentally, 1982 was also the year that Maya Ying Lin's war memorial was dedicated to the 60,000 US soldiers who died in Vietnam and, through association, the more than one million Vietnam soldiers
who died in the same war (Twinkies, Spam and Marijuana were the most popular rations with US soldiers during that war in South East Asia).
G.I. Joe (the action
figure) was modeled after the 1945 William Wellman movie "The Story of G.I. Joe," starring Robert Mitchum and Burgess Meredith.
In 1931, Wellman also directed James Cagney and Jean Harlow in the brutally machismo film "Public Enemy." G.I. Joe (Wellman's
movie character) was based on the life of Ernie Pyle, a World War II war correspondent who found his voice through a typewriter.
In
Ernie Pyle's 1943 book Here Is Your War he wrote, "I don't know whether it was their good fortune or misfortune to get out
of [Tunisia] so early in the game. I guess it doesn't make any difference, once a man has gone. Medals and speeches and victories
are nothing to them any more. They died and others lived and nobody knows why it is so." G.I. Joe (the action figure for
young boys) did not find his voice through a typewriter; he found his voice through the violence of a rocket launcher.
In
1964, when toy stores were all about G.I. Joe (the action figure), the TV program Gomer Pyle made its broadcast premiere. Gomer Pyle was based on a character that Jim Nabors played in the Andy Griffith Show one season
earlier. In the Andy Griffith Show, Gomer was a gas station attendant who was drafted into the armed forces. Nabors developed
his character for "The Gomer Pyle" show, making the program the first spin off television series in that medium's brief history.
150 episodes of the series aired from 1964 to 1969.
I think Gomer Pyle was the kind of character who his fellow soldiers
might easily have nicknamed "Twinkle Toes." Unfortunately, there have never been critical discussions linking Gomer Pyle,
Ernie Pyle, G.I. Joe or, even, G.I. Joe Nurse. "You're born naked and everything else you put on is drag."
In 2002,
Gomer Pyle (the TV character) was honored by the United States Marine Corps for representing the military in "good faith."
Jim Nabors accepted the award on Gomer Pyle's behalf. In the TV program, Gomer Pyle often found himself getting into trouble
as a result of his ability to resolve problems with his intellect, not his fists. It seems that he might have been more at
home with a typewriter than a rocket launcher.
Ernie Pyle (the war correspondent) wrote for the U.S. Military publication
"Stars & Stripes." He died on April 18, 1945. Ernie Pyle was one of 15,000 American troops lost in battles in and around
Okinawa. During that same military campaign, 150,000 Japanese troops were killed including 85 nurses who were mistaken for
Japanese infantry by U.S. forces. The nurses were burned to death in a cave where they were hiding. In that case, US troops
found their collective voice through "flame throwers," hand grenades and stupidity.
In 2001, James Tobin wrote a biography
about war correspondent Ernie Pyle. In the book, the author criticized Pyle for glorifying the brutality of World War II in
naïve and simplistic ways. In an essay titled "The Death of Captain Waskow" (published by the Washington Daily News on January
10, 1944), Pyle wrote this about his experiences in World War ll: "I don't know who that first one was. You feel small in
the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don't ask silly questions."
Before he enlisted in the
United States Army, Ernie Pyle, and his wife Jerry, built a small 5-room cottage that is still located at 900 Girard Boulevard
S.E, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Today his home has been converted into a branch of the public library system. The Ernie Pyle Memorial Library was established in 1947, two years after the writer's death. Pyle's old bedroom
now houses the library's small but distinguished collection of fiction. The bathroom, where Jerry, in a drunken fit, attempted
suicide with a pair of scissors, is the library's periodical archive. In the living room, surrounded by shelves of "best
sellers," Pyle's typewriter, war medals, and select hand written letters to his wife are displayed in a glass case.
Prior
to Pyle's brief tenure in Albuquerque, the couple spent 7 years criss-crossing the United States in a travel trailer. From
his trailer, Pyle sent his employer, the Scripps Howard newspapers, a series of articles about his experiences on the road.
At the end of that nomadic period, Pyle, Jerry, and Pyle's writing career were worn out and exhausted. It is a popular notion
that World War II saved Pyle's writing career.
I live four blocks from the Ernie Pyle Memorial Library and often walk
there to borrow books and exercise my dog. It's a nice walk. That is, it's a nice walk if you ignore the many sonic booms
and occasional explosions generated from the nearby Kirtland Air Force base. Kirtland Air Force Base occupies 52,000 acres south of Albuquerque. It's really, really big. One can walk to the front gate of the base from the
Pyle library.
The annual budget to operate Kirtland is approximately 4 billion dollars. That is double the amount of
money spent on the New Mexico Department of Education to help kids develop their intellect, not their fists. The 35,000 employees
in the New Mexico Department of Education serve 350,000 students, in 89 school districts throughout the state. Curiously,
these numbers suggest a hopeful ratio of one employee to every ten students. Unfortunately, I don't think it really works
that way.
On August 6, 1945, less than 4 months after Ernie Pyle's death, the Enola Gay dropped two New-Mexico-made atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that resulted in deaths equaling the total number of students
presently served by the New Mexico Department of Education. Shortly after this genocidal attack, Kirtland Air Force base was
reassigned a new mission to develop aircraft and flight strategies that would serve "the weapons of the future" (nuclear weapons
of mass destruction).
Buried in caves that are cut deep into the hills surrounding Kirtland Air Force Base (which I
can see from my backyard), the U.S. military stores the world's largest stockpile of nuclear warheads. And, if any of these
caves also serve as fallout shelters, one can be sure that stored amongst other emergency supplies are ample supplies of
Hostess Twinkies.
At the moment, Kirtland Air Force base plays a central role in supplying planes, troops and weaponry
to the Persian Gulf. There, a U.S. led jihad is being staged to preserve the Bush family's petroleum fortune.
At the
front gate of Kirtland Air Force base in Albuquerque, armed guards are stationed behind small mountains of sandbags. And there, in front of the sandbags, is a small wooden sign
that reads "Today's World threat: High." The sign reminds me of those you might see in a national forest where an image of
Smokey Bear alerts you to the potential danger of campfires. However, at the front gate of Kirtland Air Force Base there are no campfires,
no roasting marshmallows, and no Smokey Bear. At the front gate of the Kirtland Air Force Base there are only young, frightened
soldiers armed with loaded, automatic weapons, and orders to kill.
For a brief time during World War II, Smokey Bear
was used to spread false and hateful messages about the Japanese. A 1944 Smokey Bear ad campaign suggested that forest fires
were the direct result of Japanese ("monkey-men") kamikaze sorties. The ad read "Our Carelessness, Their Secret Weapon."
Shame on Smokey. In Capitan, New Mexico, there is a museum dedicated to Smokey Bear. There, one can view these wartime ad campaigns, visit Smokey's
grave and buy Smokey Bear T-shirts. In 1964, 14 years after young Smokey was rescued from a forest fire in southern New Mexico,
the US Postal Service issued Smokey his own Zip code (20252) due his growing popularity and growing quantities of fan mail.
Perhaps Smokey Bear should have been made into a toy action figure.
Smokey died in 1976, at the age of 28, while imprisoned
in the Washington D.C. Zoo. His remains are buried at the Smokey Bear Museum in Capitan, New Mexico. At the museum, a tour
guide reminds visitors that Smokey's full name is, in fact, Smokey Bear, not Smokey the Bear. Apparently, including "the"
would be equivalent to saying Santa "the" Claus.
For a variety of reasons, it seems that 1964 was a fairly brutal year.
U.S. president Lyndon Johnson spent those 12 months preparing American troops to fire bomb North Vietnam in 1965. In Florida,
Cassius Clay beat the living crap out of his rival, Sonny Liston, at the Convention Hall in Miami Beach. That same year,
Dr. Martin Luther King also made an appearance in Florida. Unfortunately, he was arrested in St. Augustine for leading a march
in opposition to certain racial segregation laws in that state.
Internationally, things didn't look much better. Brazil
was overtaken by military dictator Castelo Branca. And his dictatorship remained in place for the next 25 years. During
his reign, Branca took the opportunity to assemble South America's first CIA-trained (School of the Americas in Georgia) death
squads. In Rhodesia, a post-colonial coup put Kamazu Banda in power (Britian had colonized Rhodesia prior to 1964). Banda
terrorized his population for the next 30 years in what many Africans consider to be the most repressive government in the
history of that continent. Banda secured his power by killing every last one of his political opponents and then instituting
a single party political system. Duh. In the United States, I wonder if the popularity of G.I. Joe (the action figure) might
have been a sanitized reflection of all this brutality? Possibly.
On July 5, 1964, in Norwalk, Connecticut, I celebrated my 6th birthday. And, to celebrate, my parents hosted a "G.I.
Joe Birthday Party." Hasbro made the party really easy. Not only did they sell the 12 inch man-dolls (action figures),
but there were a whole range of official G.I Joe after-market products including plastic grenades, military vests, and automatic
weapons, all of which were young-boy-size. So, for my party, everyone came dressed as his or her particular version of G.I.
Joe. We ate cake from official G.I. Joe mess kits, and when our bellies were full, we engaged in "G.I. Joe War Games."
Playing "War" was a lot like playing "Tag-You're It," only we were armed to the teeth and ready to defend
freedom, justice and our next door neighbor, Jodi. Jodi was our very own G.I. Joe Nurse. And Jodi was always invited to
play war. See, if you were wounded and then sent to be treated by the G.I. Joe Nurse, Jodi often folded into the day's drama
a side game of "doctor" (farewell to arms!).
Two famous artists grew up in the town where I was "mortally wounded" on that July 5, 1964. They were both 12
years old when I turned 6 and are now living in New York City. Joe Coleman is a performance artist who blows himself up with
fireworks and bites the heads off of live rodents. He receives grants from the New York State Council on the Arts to perform
these high-art rituals. He might have been fun to have on our side during our war games.
Cary S. Leibowitz is a painter who goes by the pseudonym "Candyass." He grandstands his sense of self-reproach
by painting slogans such as "kick me," and "don?t hate me because I'm mediocre." Leibowitz's paintings
sell for a lot of money. Aside from these two characters, Norwalk is just a little, sleepy coastal town. Sadly, it seems
to have been overshadowed and overwhelmed by the absolute abundance of wealth in nearby Greenwich, Connecticut (one of the
most affluent communities in the United States and, possibly, the universe).
Greenwich is the town where George Bush Senior grew up during the 1940's. There, he began raising his family before packing
up camp (not "Camp") and moving to Texas. While living in Greenwich, the Bush family employed 3 maids and an individual
chauffeur for each of their 5 children. Apparently, all the chauffeurs were needed to shuttle the children back and forth
to the Greenwich Country Day School. The Greenwich Country Day school is a private school whose reputation for their arts
curriculum was well known at the time.
After George Bush left Connecticut to become president of the United States (1988), he proceeded to make some of the usual
administrative adjustments that presidents do when they are elected. One of those adjustments included firing John Frohnmeyer
who, at the time, was the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. Frohnmeyer's successful management of this important
cultural organization was well known and respected. However, the newly elected president immediately began reducing the size
and scope of the NEA. Between 1992 and 1996 the NEA lost 55% of its annual budget.
Today things have gotten even worse. Presently it is close to impossible for artists such as Joe Coleman and Cary S.
Leibowitz to receive federal support for their creative activities. In fact, 2001 statistics indicate that the United States
federal government spends only $5 per capita to support cultural events compared to the $50 per capita spent by Canada, France
and Sweden. And, one might note that Germany and Finland top this list in that their support for the arts is close to $90
per capita.
Back to my birthday. For my 6th birthday, my uncle Sam (his name really is Uncle Sam) who lives in Florida sent me a
check for $20 to buy anything I wanted. At the time, $20 was a big deal to both me and my parents. So, as a result, my parents
insisted on facilitating the whole operation. We drove to Kiddytown toy store located in the heart of Norwalk, Connecticut.
At the time, Kiddytown represented the absolute epicenter of my entire universe. They had an expansive inventory of G.I.
Joe products. Kiddytown was located right across the street from Hank's Novelty Shop. Hank's had an expansive inventory
of cigars, porno magazines and fireworks.
At that time it was illegal to sell fireworks in Connecticut. If, however, your dad knew Hank, that is, if he was a regular
customer (which meant
he purchased a reasonable amount of cigars and pornography), you might get lucky. That is, around the 4th of July, Hank
always had an impressive inventory of fireworks just for his regular customers. I'd like to imagine that Joe Coleman was
one of those regular customers who got his start as an exploding performance artist through the firecrackers he might have
purchased at Hank's Novelty Shop.
Back to my birthday. Unfortunately, on that day, Uncle Sam's birthday money was not to be spent at Hank's Novelty Shop.
We were going to Kiddytown. After studying the isles, my Dad suggested that I might be interested in a green, plastic, military
troop carrier. My G.I. Joe could ride around in it. However, I had my eyes focused on something else.
And I'd like to think that what I had my eyes focused on was simply a knee-jerk response to all the G.I. Joe-ness that
surrounded me and my playmates that year. See, what I wanted to purchase was a tea set. And never mind trying to wrap all
this around theories of "queerness" or Gender Study analyses. I simply wanted to have a tea party.
The decision was complicated by a variety of things including my dad's vision of who he wanted his son to be. He had
a specific sense of his boy that definitely did not include tea sets. My dad had been a boxer in college (he literally found
his voice through his fists) and now taught Wood Shop classes at a Junior High school in Norwalk. It was a "manly"
kind of thing to teach. That is, teaching Wood Shop was related to, but different than, teaching Gym classes. He used to
take pleasure in humiliating the boys with long hair by making them wear hairnets "just to be safe in the shop."
Years later, and for a very, very brief time, I was employed as a substitute teacher in the same Junior High school. I
had long hair and wore clogs. After being humiliated by student football players (it was definitely the clogs), I never went
back.
Back to the tea set. Yes, my parents reluctantly bought the tea set. However, before I had the chance to unwrap the
package, or even open the box, the whole thing disappeared right into thin air. Months later, while I was rummaging around
in our attic for a Halloween costume (well, OK, it wasn't exactly Halloween - I was just playing dress up), I actually found
the tea set. It was hidden under a pile of my mom's dresses and skirts, in a place where, perhaps, a young boy might never
look. I didn't tell anyone about my discovery.
And for the next few years, when no one was home, I would sneak into the attic, uncover the tea set, and there, surrounded
by all my invisible friends (no G.I. Joe) we'd sip tea and have fantastic parties. From the attic window we looked out on
the neighborhood kids and took quiet pleasure in knowing that we didn't have to participate in all those hateful games they
played in the street below (Dodge ball, Monkey In The Middle, Tag-You're-It, Blind Man's Bluff, etc). When the parties ended,
we were always careful to place everything back exactly as we had found it. No one ever knew. No one ever suspected.
I don't know what ever happened to my invisible friends or for that matter, the tea set. Both have been lost to the past.
However, I do know that two years later, when I was 8 years old, I asked Santa Claus if he might bring me an Easy Bake Oven
for Christmas.
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